Vocational GCSEs will tackle 'exam snobbery'

SCHOOL exams in subjects such as engineering, tourism and leisure are to be given GCSE and A-level status under Government proposals to tackle a "culture of snobbery" in education.

Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, said yesterday she wanted to raise the status of vocational studies in schools.

This week she will announce an overhaul of the exam system in England and Wales with the intention of ending the distinction between vocational and academic courses.

From September, GCSEs will be available in manufacturing, engineering, applied business, applied information and communications technology, applied science, applied art and design, leisure and tourism and health and social care.

From September 2004, the subjects will be offered at A-level, with the aim of continuing them to degree level.

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Tony Blair told Sky News that the Government wanted to give pupils the chance to develop their own talents. "So no more treating vocational education as some second-class type of education; building the education system around the needs of the individual pupil," he said.

Miss Morris said there was an "awful lot of snobbery around" that viewed pupils opting for vocational studies as intellectually second best with no hope of going to university.

"We should be a bit ashamed of the fact that our vocational qualifications are just not respected in the same way," she told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost.

"At the end of the day our nation needs vocational skills just as much as it needs academic skills."

Bill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, said her views were a progressive step towards revitalising Britain's manufacturing sector.

"She is absolutely right to raise the status of vocational skills, which for far too long have been seen as a poor relation to academic qualifications," he said.

Miss Morris also hinted that, with modern foreign languages now being taught in primary schools, they might be dropped as a core subject at 14 to allow children to concentrate on subjects that really interested them.

The consultation document will also outline proposals to offer the brightest pupils an "extra challenge" beyond the existing A-levels. Miss Morris said there was a need for the qualification to keep up with improving standards.

However, she said there was no truth in the suggestion that A-levels were getting easier and added that she valued the gold standard of A-level.

Three European ambassadors have pleaded for language courses not to be dropped from Britain's state schools.

The German, Italian and Spanish ambassadors to Britain say language teaching should be mandatory in primary schools and continue into university.

Hans Friedrich von Ploetz, from Germany, Marques de Tamaron of Spain and Luigi Amaduzzi of Italy say in an interview with the Independent newspaper today that there are not enough language teachers in Britain and it was difficult to arrange school exchanges.

Mr Amaduzzi says that the number of students studying languages at European schools is increasing but it is not happening in Britain.

He says: "Please learn other foreign languages, please be open to the usefulness of learning languages. This is something so logical and self-explanatory."